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Das Boot, the Creation Story, Re-created
(April 25, 2008)
(c) 2008 Tom Jones
I like playing the host. My home is Zion, one of the best homes in the entire world, and I like showing it off to visitors, especially those from foreign countries. Like Chicago.
Last year, a drought year, about the same time of year, I arranged a Subway with a couple from Toronto who described themselves as “strong hikers”, but new to technical stuff. I walked in the door of the Mean Bean at 8:03 to meet them, and there was a cozy looking couple at the back table, just starting on breakfast. They looked like strong hikers – for septuagenarians! Should I even ask? What have I done? I stepped back outside to find a pasty-looking, very polite couple in their early thirties raring to go – whew!!! We had a great day out.
This year, a friend of a friend (and a regular customer) was coming out for a Zion trip and looking for partners for Friday. I resisted for awhile, but I love the Subway, and playing the host. A nice casual Subway would be fun, so I proposed it to Karen from Chicago; also inviting Sarah, one of our guide-aspirants at Zion Adventure Company who needed to add The Subway to her canyon resume.
Knowing me, “just” doing the Subway would be insufficiently complicated, so I push for extending with Das Boot. We would be wearing drysuits from ZAC, so the extra cold water exposure should not be a problem, and it should be full or flowing lightly, which would be more fun. Not knowing any better, Karen and Sarah agreed this would be a good idea.
Friday arrives and off we go. A beautiful day. The day’s first adventure: we take a slightly different route into the top of the drainage that leads to Das Boot, and I think we have avoided the awkward downclimb/crossing to get onto the easy slickrock. And we are soooooo close! There is, unfortunately, an 8 foot vertical wall between us and where we want to be. I ponder, poke around. We COULD hike uphill a couple hundred yards and ‘head’ this little slot that blocks our way – but it is so close. I take my pack off and scope a downclimb – over the edge, a bounce off a service-berry bush onto a log and over onto the slickrock. SHOULD be no problem. I drop. The service-berry bush provides less service than expected, and I miss the log, rolling sideways and… I flex into a stem, looking down at an 8-foot fall into a slot, which I thankfully don’t take. A few scratches is my penance for a poor choice. Catastrophe avoided (today’s theme?) - Sarah and Karen come down a different place with a thigh belay.
We meander over the slickrock and through the woods to the Das Boot entrance, marveling at the beautiful spring day - loads of wildflowers. Near the bottom, we can hear the roar of the stream – how much is it flowing? Will it be too much?
We arrive at the ‘put-in’ – and the stream is roaring – a good 1.5 to 2 cfs. “Ah,” I smile. Perfect. We suit up and munch down. 12:30 (“they got a late start”) finds us starting our first steps into the canyon.
The first bit is about 100 feet that we can lean back and float. We lean back and float. Karen says her suit is leaking. Well… Drysuits tend to leak a little bit – and we take a look at Karen’s zipper, which was not pulled all the way down. A 3/8” gap, I leap to the conclusion it is the villain in this picture. We yank it into position, and continue.
Sarah and I have the benefit of ZAC guide suits, which are premium dry suits used by guides and on guided trips. Any little problems with the guide suits are noted immediately and fixed, AND these delux suits have few problems. Karen, on the other hand, has the standard ZAC rental drysuit. We have no way of testing the suits, so we rely on customers to report problems – which is not a rely-able way of doing things. These suits tend to develop small leaks, and we fix them when we find them. Neither style of dry suit has a latex neck-gasket – these suits have a neoprene neck seal which is more comfortable, but does not allow submersion without consequences.
The next section in Das Boot is like the first, but continues for, say, an hour. We hop in and float. After five minutes, Karen says she is quite wet. We pull out onto a rock and have a quick discussion. “How wet?”
“Quite wet, but I’ll be OK.” Karen has no desire to back out, because the canyon IS beautiful, and she does not want to be the party pooper. She’s thinking she can tough it out for an hour or hour and a half – what Das Boot usually takes.
This being a non-guiding day, I avoid my usual propensity to take charge and make all decisions. If she says she will be OK…
We move on. The water is flowing a bit, and at first does not seem all that cold. After about 10 minutes – OK, that water is cold. My right foot, with a thinner neoprene sock due to the sprained-ankle-brace I am wearing, is already quite cold, and my hands, when I get them wet, are cold. The first part is pretty easy – in fact, in normal conditions, all of Das Boot IS easy, a series of short downclimbs between wades, with the occasional swim. Today, the short downclimbs are problematic as the water hides the rocks, the depth varies from shallow to deep, and there is just enough current to be “pushy” when concentrated – like at each downclimb. The going is slow. We are all a little cold – but Karen is definitely cold.
I talk up the log-walk to the arch – one of my favorite features in the canyon. I joke about training for the log-walk in Chicago – log-walk parks? We arrive at the log-walk – or should I say FORMER log-walk, for the log has collapsed. What was to be an exciting, easy walk across the top of a giant ponderosa log is now – well a short rappel with a face-shot of icy cold water as its finish. Fun! Well, only if you are warm, which we are not.
The 6 foot rap is created by a log jam, and the vertical stump of a log makes a fine anchor. The stance is poor, and we are juggling the three of us. The noise of flowing water makes the communication difficult – I take my pack off and hand it back to Sarah, unaware that she has just taken out the rope when… well, she did NOT drop my pack, but the rope ends up swirling in the eddy below. Hmmmm. Not so good.
I pull out some slings and start making a chain of slings to down-climb the drop. Sarah comes up with a long piece of 1” tubular – better. I anchor it off and try to rap double on my ATC. Won’t budge. I reset, and rap single, getting the icy face-shot to finish the rap, into a mildly swirling swim. I tie the ropebag to the end of the webbing for Sarah to pull up.
Swimming away from the drop, I circle around and land where the former log-walk used to end. Climbing up and around, I can walk the now-lower log back to near the rap, and watch Sarah setting it up. Karen is not going to like the faceshot any more than I did, and will only get colder. Darn! If there was any way to avoid…
The light bulb goes off! I have an anchor over here, and they have an anchor over there. Stretch the rope, and we could do a guided rappel, and they would not have to take the face shot. I wave my hands and pantomime various rigging activities and, remarkably, Sarah figures out what I am getting at. We rig a guided rappel and Sarah and Karen come across face-shot-free. But, the whole event took at least 20 minutes, so we are all, especially Karen, much colder now.
We continue wading, swimming and stumbling downcanyon. The many, many short easy downclimbs become awkward, slow, numbing obstacles. We rap 2 or 3, getting the face shot. The going is slow, and Karen is slowing down. She is having trouble moving here legs – the legs of the suit are filled with water and not only weigh 20 lbs extra each, but also surround her leg muscles with strength-robbing cold water. She uses her hands to move her legs at each downclimb. Her hands are getting cold, and she is going into the uncontrolled shivering stage anytime there is a break. “Gotta get out of here” I think, eyeing each break in the canyon wall for an exit that Sarah or I could climb to sunlight, and bring Karen up on belay. None are available that are in the “reasonable” range.
My memory is weak, but I have done the canyon 4 or 5 times before. I sense we are near the end. A stump blocks the slot. I swim to the stump, stem up over it with difficulty, perch on the top to help Karen up. She struggles, struggles again, then makes it over the top. I encourage – “we are near the end”. Is it a statement of fact or of hope? I don’t know.
A short downclimb into a swim. It looks like no problem. Sarah goes first to check the depth – yup – a swim. Karen goes next, sits down at the top of downclimb and pulls her legs over with her hands. I swim up to it and… and suddenly Karen is pushing back, in distress. I grab her harness and help pull her back from the brink – she yells – ahhhh. Her foot, tucked under her body has become wedged in the rocks. We try backward, forward, to the left, to the right – it just seems to get worse! Different positions. My stance is awkward, and I fear I will lose my grip or bump her over the edge and… her lower leg would snap and… (the consequences would be grim).
I secure my stance, get a better grip on her harness and hold her more securely. The immediate fear of going over the falls abates, and she relaxes some, works her foot – it pops free! Down she goes, grateful to be released!
We swim around the corner. There is more light coming into the canyon. A long swim and I am beside Karen and she has NO flotation, riding low in the water. Not good. A couple more corners and there is a patch of sunlight and an actual dry bank. We pull out onto it to assess. Karen is wasted and shivering uncontrollably. The legs of her suit are filled to the crotch with icewater. It is 3:30, we have been in there 3 hours! I try to get at her ankle seals, but they are under shoes and socks. Sarah’s knife has a point on it, and does a good job of cutting a slit in the fabric by the ankle. Water drains out for quite a while. Karen realizes why she has had problems moving her legs. We dig out some food, and hats. The sunlight feels good, but we have a bit more canyon to the final rappel, and being able to de-suit and get Karen dry and warm. I hug, I encourage, I cajole. Karen gets up and stumbles back into the water for the final section, thankfully short and filled with sand so not deep. A rappel and one swim separate us from Russell Gulch, the land of the living.
Usually, there is a great jump here. We decide against, and use the dicey hollow stump to rap from. I lower Karen down to Sarah, and they wade out of Das Boot. We climb and crawl up the Subway entrance gulley, and follow the trail until we find slickrock and sunlight. By then Karen is somewhat revived. We strip off the suits and find dry clothing for all. Then there is just the little hike out…
Whew. Catastrophe avoided! Lessons in abundance!! Here are the ones I come up with:
1. Sometimes dry suits leak a bit, and sometimes they leak a lot. It is important to establish the difference, and act appropriately.
2. What we (ZAC) do with the drysuits is insufficient. We must do better.
3. Doesn’t matter that I am not officially the guide. As the only one who has done the route before, it IS up to me to (carefully) evaluate leakage and make a (smart) decision for the group.
4. Two people in there – woulda been bad. Team of three is pretty much the minimum for canyoneering.
5. At the first rappel, we could have backed out. Probably should have!
6. Even a little waterflow, in Das Boot, is significant. All those little, easy downclimbs become serious obstacles.
7. Hypothermia leads to stumbling. Stumbling can lead to injury. Injury CAN make it impossible for the hypothermic to get re-warmed. I think if Karen has gone over the falls, she would have broken her lower leg. Even if I had the strength to carry her down the canyon from there, it is not clear we would have been able to bring her back from the brink of hypothermia without her being able to move sufficiently.
8. Sometimes, just doing the Subway is the right thing to do.
9. (Ram points out that the “Full Left Fork”, the section above Das Boot, presents considerably more technical difficulties which would be considerably harder than Das Boot in these conditions).
A big thank you to Karen for not going over the falls, and for CLAIMING to have had a great day, despite the excitement. Another big thank you to Sarah for remaining calm and professional throughout the ordeal. And a bigger thanks to the Lord Almighty, for letting me get away with one, again.
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